


Q is for Questionnaire (aka "I Am Aware of All Internet Traditions")

by splash_the_cat



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2014-02-11
Packaged: 2018-01-11 22:42:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1178828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/splash_the_cat/pseuds/splash_the_cat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tumblr is nothing like Twitter.  For Genfic Day 2014 On-World Alphabet Soup</p>
            </blockquote>





	Q is for Questionnaire (aka "I Am Aware of All Internet Traditions")

Teal'c's first experience with the Tau'ri obsession with questionnaires was a Cosmo magazine given to him by some airmen, early in his SGC tenure, in an attempt to, as O'Neill later described it, "Screw with the alien newbie." This, of course, was after O'Neill had stopped laughing when he walked in on Teal'c reading the questions to a vaguely horrified Daniel Jackson, to whom Teal'c had taken said questionnaire for assistance in deciphering the cultural cues and unfamiliar slang.

It was some years later that Cassandra began to send him internet-based questionnaires, in her own attempts to navigate her new cultural context. Most still made no sense to him, but he was content to humor her, for it was clear she gained both pleasure from their email interactions and some sense of stranger-in-a-strange-land camaraderie.

As he watched her navigate her world through the grouping of questions that veered between the banal and the deeply personal, he found them, after some time, a unique perspective into the cultural mores of his new home (though Daniel Jackson would explain to him they did not represent the Tau'ri as a whole, but specific regional, socio-economic and gendered clusters of human experience).

As Cassandra's comfort in her new world grew, so did the variety of queries she shared with him. Magazine quizzes became titillating middle-school purity tests (and Teal'c openly enjoyed bringing those to Daniel Jackson), became email chain quizzes, became Livejoural memes, became Reddit ask-me-anythings, became lolcat memes (by now he was used to the American Tau'ri penchant for internet-based speech modifications and shifts in word usage, so that he was only puzzled for a moment when the first feline-based caption picture arrived in his inbox, instead of the list of questions or requests to share an activity that he expected.), became Teal'c creating a Tumblr so that Cassandra could share a dizzying array of photographic collages depicting commentary on current events or scenes and character interactions from television and film.

"What's that?" Daniel Jackson appeared at Teal'c's shoulder as he scrolled through his dashboard. He had not intended to peruse it, given that he was here at O'Neill's cabin to spend time with with his friends, but he had brought his laptop, and everyone else had appeared otherwise engaged. Appearances, he thought darkly, that were quite deceiving. "That flashing monstrosity on your screen."

"It is an animated gifset of the pivotal relationship moments between Mako Mori and Raleigh Beckett, the titular characters in Pacific Rim." He and Samantha Carter had gone to see it on one of their rare synchronous times on planet. She had been charmed enough by the giant robots and the proficiency of Mako Mori's character that she did not feel the need to immediately compile the list of scientific inaccuracies as they exited the theater. In fact, almost a month had passed before their email exchanges on the subject of the film took a turn to the negative. It pleased Teal'c that she had been as deeply affected by the positivity and diversity of the story as much as he had.

"What's... tumbler? Did someone spell that wrong?"

Teal'c sighed. "No. Tumblr is a social media sharing site."

"Like Twitter?"

"It is nothing like Twitter." For one, he had the option of Tumblr Savior to minimize those things he did not wish to see, whereas on Twitter he had few options to limit Daniel Jackson's atrocious habit of stringing multiple entries together to make his point without removing him all together. Teal'c greatly enjoyed Twitter for both its brevity and the ease of following it from off-world, the segmented nature of twitter making it ideal for data burst transmissions through the Stargate. Unless the tweeting individual was Daniel Jackson, and then it made keeping track of his stream-of-twenty-five-entries-in-ten minutes to remark upon whatever had taken his interest that day incredibly aggravating ("I love him," Cassandra had said some weeks back, "really I do, but I just had to mute him. Sam created a new account and followed him with it, and wrote an algorithm that collects all his tweets in digest form and emails it out at midnight every day. You should ask her to add you to the list.").

"So what do you do with it?"

"It's primary function appears to be sharing images and popular culture discussions via the process of 'reblogging', usually through some combination of internet memes and these gifsets, but it is also greatly used for organizing and activism against social ills such as racism and other forms of oppression." Teal'c had in fact found social media, throughout its various incarnations, to be the most rigorous and clear education about the issues that impacted the people of Earth, especially those marginalized by majority and mainstream cultures.

"Oh really, so, like academic stuff?" Daniel Jackson's eyes lit up, and Teal'c realized he had inadvertently given him a potential new avenue for endless exposition.

Teal'c hurriedly added, "It does, however, remain primarily the domain of young people, so perhaps not the best audience for your wisdom." Daniel Jackson's apparently enthusiasm seemed to dim only a small amount at that revelation and for a moment Teal'c despaired of having another social media environment deluged. And then, it came to him, and he must email Cassandra after this and thank her for keeping him up-to-date on the world of internet social sharing. "Indeed, Daniel Jackson, I think I may have something else more suited to your linguistic interests." He pulled up Google and began to type.

"Let me introduce you to 'Doge'."


End file.
